Powers That Be' Affect News Coverage, Speaker Says

"We have been led to believe that we have a free and independent press, but the process of influencing the press is very real," Dr. Michael Parenti said last night at Moravian College.

Parenti, professor of political science at Brooklyn College, spoke on "Inventing Reality: The News Media as a Control Institution in America" before about 250 people in the college's Haupert Union.

"The U.S. media is a capital media" and has major constraints placed on it, not so much by the government, but by those who own it, Parenti said.

Chase Manhattan Bank is the largest stockholder in NBC and CBS, and is the third-largest stockholder in ABC, he said. "They are an easy target of the powers that be," he said.

He said that, in a magazine interview, Walter Cronkite said his hands often were tied when it came to reporting on certain events. "Reporters worry about getting their copy cut, about getting reassigned, and about getting promotions," Parenti said.

The only reason that some appear to be saying what they want is because the "powers that be" like what they are saying, he said.

"We are not getting a correct view of the world, but a skewed view that is being palmed off as objectivity," he said.

Objectivity means presenting a picture that the owners of the media want to see, he said.

But society is often bombarded with limitless propaganda. "The limits of actuality are the limits of propaganda," he said.

Parenti, author of "Inventing Reality - The Politics of the Mass Media," said the media doesn't control how we think, but controls what we think about by bringing certain topics to the forefront.

For example, he asked, "Have you ever read a story in the New York Times that positively reflects on a communist country? Communists are always terrible people."

The media is too often just a mouthpiece for the "powers that be," Parenti said.

It is a mouthpiece when television, radio and newspapers report that Ronald Reagan says he is for Social Security but do not report that he attacked Social Security for the past 20 years and then went after it "with claw, tooth and nail" during his first four years in office, he said.

"It is very comfortable and less risky" to be a mouthpiece. Journalists often say they are just trying to be neutral or objective but "the trick is not to be neutral or objective, but to be accurate," he said.

"To blame the reporters is to blame the weakest and most vulnerable link in the news chain," he said. The reporters do what the editors want and the editors do what the publishers want, with all responsibility reverting back to the owners, he said.

"That is a controlled, manipulated press. I don't know what to say to a reporter except to write clear, concise copy and to go to the edge and, at times, beyond the limits of what is allowed." Only then can the public be shown the reality of things, he said.

Yet, the media is not totally immune to the responses of the public, he said. The media must maintain its credibility, "if for no other reason than to better serve the few."

"Do not think for a moment it's hopeless. It's a matter of saying what am I willing to do," he said.

The public can exert some influence by writing letters to the editor and guest editorials, reading alternative news publications and networking and exchanging ideas.